The Empty Home
by mermaid2bseeker
Summary: The real events of Sherlock's return into Joanna Watson's life. Also, he discovers he has a son.


**Summary: Sherlock returns from the dead to find Joanna has a baby. This is the real events from her blog entry: The Case of the Dummy Detective**

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><p>Baker Street and indeed all of London hadn't changed much. A thinner and greyer Sherlock sat in an abandoned property across the street staring at 221b's door. He'd thought, perhaps foolishly, that once Moriarty was dispatched, the rest of his organization would fall. He'd underestimated one Colonel Selene Moran, Moriarty's right hand woman. Three years had passed while he systematically destroyed all of Moran's operations, all that was left was the colonel herself.<p>

At 8:37 a.m. the door to 221b opened and Joanna Watson exited. She went left toward Marylebone Lane where she would take the tube to the surgery, which due to an amazing set of circumstances (he suspected Mycroft's influence) she now owned. He waited until she was out of sight, then snuck out of the shadows and across the street. The door opened after a quick picking and Sherlock was in. He crept silently up the 17 stairs, in case Mrs. Hudson was listening, unlikely; and he was back in the home he hadn't seen for three years.

It was cleaner. Very. And bright, cheerful almost. A basket of soft toys rested near the couch and in the corner was a playpen. A large well-loved bear lay inside, wearing a top hat and monocle. Every table corner was covered with rubber nibs; the child is young, head height at the table, yet old enough to be grabbing for the drawers as evidenced by the plastic locks on the handles. The only thing of his remaining in the sitting room was the skull, still sat on the mantle piece, except upon closer examination, that wasn't his skull, the bone structure was different. Why would Joanna keep a stranger's skull on her mantle; impossible to theorize before more facts.

When he opened the door to his old room, he expected it to be done up in pastels, pinks or blues, maybe yellow if she didn't believe in gender-typing her child. Instead, the room was exactly as he left it, with the addition of cardboard boxes. _Case files, Books, Lab Equip., Clothes._ She had kept all his things, sealed away in his room. The dust told him this room was never entered, so why keep it this way.

There was a creak behind him, he spun around and had a brief impression of a cricket bat. . .

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><p>His head hurt, there a pounding behind his ear. "You aren't at work," he assumed it was Joanna making the tea-producing noises in the kitchen. Far too unlikely a burglar would stop to make tea while a victim was laid out on the couch. . . though not unheard of, there had been that case in the states. He sat up on the couch and noticed the child was in his playpen. The boy was holding on to the barrier, staring at him. He word plaid pants and a shirt with a large duck on it.<p>

A slam of a cup on the kitchen table, "I come home to retrieve my mobile, and who do I find snooping? Not a burglar. NO!" A slam of cabinet doors. "Sherlock bloody Holmes! Back from the dead!" The electric kettle beeped and there was the tinkle of spoon on ceramic.

Jo was making tea. His stomach flopped with the combination of fondness and homesickness that simple action seemed to produce. He watched as the boy walked to the edge of the playpen trying to follow his mother's voice.

He looked from Sherlock to Joanna to Sherlock to Joanna, before shouting "MUMMY MINE!" to Sherlock at the top of his little baby lungs. Perhaps he was afraid Sherlock was here to steal his mother away. "Mummy mine mummy mine mummy mine."

Jo walked in, and as she passed, she bent and kissed the boy's head. "Sherlock, be nice." The boy flopped onto his bear and stared.

Sherlock was baffled. "You named your son after me, why?"

She slammed his cup on the table in front of the couch, tea sloshing onto the wood. "You were dead!" She took a breath. "And don't think we won't be having a long conversation about that!"

"It was the only way to protect you."

"I don't care. I was pregnant and you died." Her finger were white around her cup.

"UP!" The boy - Sherlock Junior – had his arms raised. "Mummy UP! UP! UPUPUPUP!"

Jo sighed, and put her cup next to Sherlock's. She went and grabbed the boy around the waist and lifted him as high as she could. It was the best thing ever judging by his laughter. Sherlock sipped his tea (even after three years she remembered how he took his tea) as she brought the boy down to her waist and up again.

After a few repetitions, ("Oh, you're getting so big aren't you?" more laughter), Joanna sat on the couch with the boy. Immediately, he began to wriggle out of her grip, leaning over to grab at Sherlock.

"Whoa!" Joanna lost her fight with the boy, and he fell out of her lap and into Sherlock's. He lifted himself up until he stood on Sherlock's knees. Instinctively Sherlock braced the boy, supporting him, in case he should lose balance.

"Hi Hi Hi! I'm Sherlock ("shrlik")."

"Hello Sherlock." He stared at the boy, the resemblance was uncanny. They had only done it once, and later decided they were better as best friends than as lover, but that once had made this possible.

"HI!" The boy reached out to Sherlock's face and grabbed his cheeks. "You're Mine!"

Joanna sighed. "Sherlock, I've told you before. Everything is not yours."

"MINE!" he screamed it at his mother.

Sherlock stared at the boy. This was a moment. He could almost see it, his life traveling a wonderful path. The oddest sensation grew; he wanted to teach this little boy everything he could. He wanted Little Sherlock to annoy Mycroft and help Lestrade and mend bones and one day find a friend that would make the world enjoyable again. He wanted to be woken by bad dreams and kiss skinned knees.

"I have a son." It was less questioning and more a statement of intent.

"Yeah."

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><p>They sat there for a while, sipping their tea, watching Little Sherlock play. The toys that had been orderly in their bin were now spread out on the floor. Every few minutes, the boy would show a toy to Sherlock, who was genuinely interested in the objects of his son's world. After an hour or so, the boy's eyes were drooping and Joanna lifted him off the floor and carried him upstairs to his bed. As he put the toys away in their bin, Sherlock could hear Joanna putting their son—<em>their son!—<em>to sleep through the baby monitor in the kitchen.

When Jo came down the stairs, gone was the mother mask covering her fury. "You bastard! You utter complete BASTARD!"

"I had to. If Moriarty's men knew I was alive they would never have stopped going after the people I cared about."

"We had to use dental records!" She braced herself against the fireplace, staring at the skull. "Your body—the body!—was so burned we had to use dental records!" She swept the skull off the mantle. The cranium landed near the door, the jaw near the kitchen. "Which Mycroft provided, of course he knew!" She stared at him through the mirror. There was a long moment with the potential to end in punches thrown at his person, but it ended when Jo sighed and turned to face him. "Who was he?"

"Who?"

She gestured to the skull. "The poor sod missing his head in your coffin!"

"A John Doe fire victim, destined for a pauper's grave." Mycroft had made the arrangements days before Sherlock had 'died' in the explosion that killed Moriarty. "You kept his skull?"

"I thought it was yours."

"Why keep my skull?"

"Because you were dead, and I was pregnant, and some days it was all I could do to get out of bed." She curled in on her self, arms wrapped around her stomach. "Talking to you helped."

Sherlock became over-aware of himself standing by the couch, and Joanna standing near the mantle. Something told him he was supposed to comfort her, so that's what he did, not sure if he was doing it properly; hugging had never been a strong suit. She fit under his chin. He felt in that moment he could wrap her up in himself and never be separate entities again.

"Knowing what I know now, I would have made the same decision; it would have hurt more, but I would still have done it. I was protecting you."

Tilting her head up, she looked him in the eyes. "Why now? Why come back?"

"Colonel Serena Moran, the last piece of Moriarty, shot a man named Ronald Adair three days ago. I believe she did it to bring me out of hiding."

"A trap!" Jo backed away.

"Of course. One that will be turned to our advantage. Thought I am afraid we shall have to vacate Baker Street for the rest of today and tonight."

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><p>"When you said 'vacate Baker Street' I didn't think it meant, 'be down the street'." Joanna was sat on the floor, resting her head against the pram's tray table. Little Sherlock was fast asleep, a pair of pink earmuffs resting around his head, in case of gunfire.<p>

Sherlock was focused intently on a spot outside the window. "There are only two locations Moran can make her shot from, and I can see both from this abandoned building."

A shop window's dummy had been placed in 221B on a radio controlled trolley. Every so often Joanna would thumb the toggle in her hand and the figure would glide across the room. A light strategically placed meant that anyone looking at the curtained windows of their home would see the shadow of a man pacing around the room. "It doesn't even look like you."

Ten minutes of mind-numbing silence later, there was a muffled shot, a plink of glass and the dummy fell.

"The shot came from number 226 on the 2nd floor."

Joanna's fingers were dancing over her phone's keypad, typing the message to Lestrade. "It's sent."

Quickly the sound of police sirens arrived

"I told them to drive silently!" Sherlock snarled. "She's gonna run and they'll be too incompetent to catch her!"

Jo sighed. She rose up and detached the tray table, checking its weight. Footsteps rapidly approached their hiding place and before Sherlock could stop her, she had run out the door. There was a smack and a thump. When he made it out, keeping the baby protected, he saw Jo sitting on Moran's unconscious backside, broken tray at her feet.

"I think I have some anger issues right now," she said.


End file.
